Portfolio gTLD applicant Donuts plans to offer trademark owners defensive registrations at 5% to 10% of the cost of a normal domain name registration, co-founder Richard Tindal said today.

Speaking at the Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress here in New York, Tindal also revealed some of Donuts’ current thinking about the Domain Protected Marks List service outlined in its gTLD applications.

DPML, which was created by Donuts rather than ICANN, is a little like ICM Registry’s Sunrise B service for .xxx — trademark owners will be able to block domains related to their trademarks.

DPML domains will not resolve, and there’ll be no annual renewal fee.

But there will likely be several differences with .xxx, as Tindal explained.

How to get a block

Each DPML listing will block a string across all of Donuts’ gTLDs, which could be as many as 307 (if Donuts wins all of its contention sets), potentially reducing administrative headaches for trademark owners.

Second, while ICM only allowed strings to be blocked that exactly matched the trademark, Donuts’ standard will merely be that the blocked domain contains the trademarked string.

Trademark owners will have to buy a DPML listing for each string they want blocked, however. It’s not going to be a “wildcard” system. ING wouldn’t be able to block everything ending in “ing”.

If Microsoft wanted to block microsoft.tlds and microsoftwindows.tlds, it would have to request both of those strings separately, but the blocks would be place across every Donuts TLD.

The standard for inclusion is probably going to be that the trademark is listed in the official Trademark Clearinghouse, and that it would qualify for a Sunrise registration (ie, it’s actually being used).

Trademarks that qualify for the Trademark Claims service but not Sunrise would not, it seems, qualify for DPML.

Un-blocks

There’s also going to be a way for trademark owners to un-block domains that have been blocked by other trademark owners.

If Apple the gadget maker blocked the string “apple” across all Donuts gTLDs, for example, Apple Records would be able to unblock apple.music (if Donuts wins .music) if it had a trademark on “apple” in the TMCH.

The standard again would be that Apple Records qualified for a Sunrise, but the unblocking could actually happen long after the .music Sunrise period was over.

If Apple the gadget maker thought it might want to use apple.tld domains in future, its best best would be to register the domains during Sunrise, Tindal said.

Pricing

DPML listings would be available for either five or 10 years (Donuts hasn’t decided yet, but it’s leaning towards five) and pricing will probably be between 5% and 10% of the cost of registering the domains normally during general availability, Tindal said.

Let’s say, for example, that Donuts wins only a certain number of its contention sets and ends up launching 200 new gTLDs, each of which is priced at $10 per domain per year.

If the 5-10% price estimate holds, trademark owners would have to pay between $0.50 and $1 per string, per gTLD, per year. For a single trademark, that would be between $100 and $200 per year, or $500 to $1,000 over the five-year period of the block.

It doesn’t sound like there’s going to be an option for trademark owners to block their sensitive strings in only selected, relevant Donuts gTLDs using DPML. It’ll be all or none.

Donuts has not yet disclosed its pricing plans for any of its proposed gTLDs, so the numbers used here are of course just examples. They could be higher or lower when the domains come to market.

In addition, if the string in question is a “premium” generic word in one or more of Donuts’ gTLDs, the price of blocking it could head sharply north.

Tindal noted that the plans outlined during today’s conference session represent Donuts’ current thinking and may be subject to change.